You would make your way back
over to First Thessalonians. When you think of the Christian
life, I don't know what you think of.
I know part of my upbringing really messed that up. Paula and I were both raised
Roman Catholic and later ended up in some fundamentalist churches
and charismatic churches and I would say broader evangelical
churches. And there tends to be an emphasis
in the speaking about the Christian life to talk about the don'ts,
right? Don't do this. Don't do that. In fact, there was something
going around on Facebook, at least in the algorithm the AI
has for me to pop up where the current Pope said, there'll be
a plenary indulgence if you fast from social media. It's funny
that that came across on social media. And by that, what they
mean is you get a pass, right? Because for a lot of people in
those religions, including so-called evangelical religions, there's
a tendency to take and make the Christian life in. You want to
make sure you're at at least 50.0001% good so you can make
it across that hurdle, right? It's interesting, but it's deadly
in that for unbelievers, if that is the truth that they are relying
on, it's gonna send them to hell. And for believers, I think it
robs you of a joy that you could have in this life that you tend
to miss out on when you start to look at life in a performance
way. Now, having said that, if you're
familiar at all with Paul's epistles or 1 Thessalonians in particular,
What Paul tends to do is talk about theological concepts and
truth in the first half of his epistle, and then he tends to
talk about the implications for the Christian life in the second
half. And a lot of people turn that aspect of Paul's teaching
into some sort of formula, right? It's like, yeah, yeah, we know
the gospel. We don't need to spend a lot of time talking about
the doctrines of the gospel or being comforted by the gospel.
What we need are practical ways to live out our lives. And then
on the other hand, there are some people who will talk about
the doctrine, but as a message I listened to from Joe recently
said, the doctrine never touches their lives. And I think those
are both extremes we want to avoid. Now, having put that out
there, chapter four onward, Paul is going to talk about the Christian
life, and we read a term that can get used and abused, and
that's of sanctification. But right before that, what Paul
does is he has a prayer for them. And I think it's very striking
and very appropriate for us to think about it that way. We do
need the truth, and we do need to consider, I'll put it this
way, practical holiness, but we need to understand that in
its right place. And in its right place is, it
is a fruit and a gift from God that we can enjoy, not a means
by which we grow to acceptance by God. And by way of illustration,
I know that Joe had brought this up plenty of times in conversation,
and I've heard it in messages, and he liked to talk about the
misunderstanding of so-called lordship salvation. And what
Joe said about it in our conversations and from the pulpit is rightly
understood. There's nothing wrong with that. Jesus is Lord. He saves us. There's nothing wrong with that.
The problem comes again is the way that it's worded is people
say, you need to make Jesus Lord of your life to be saved. Joe
rightly would say, you can't do that. He's already Lord. You're
not gonna make him Lord. You're not gonna bring that forward. And another phrase like that,
and it pertains a little more specifically to what we're talking
about here, is that of progressive sanctification, rightly understood. I don't have a problem with it,
but normally the way that it's given is you become more and
more like Christ, you become more and more holy in proportion
to the number of good things that you do. And there are people
who say things like, it's both a gift and a wage. Now, again, I'm gonna diverge
a little bit here. I don't know about you, but again,
I work a job, and if every time I talk to my employer, they said,
we're giving you a gift. You're like, am I not doing anything
here? I mean, I thought I was contributing.
And likewise, the other side of it is true. If you did nothing
at all, and somebody anonymously paid off all of your debt and
filled up your bank account so you never had to worry about
things again, you wouldn't talk about that as something you earned. Or if you did, and the person
who gave you that gift found out, they would be offended because
if they did it, and this is how I would apply it in this way,
if they did it and ensured it, not because of anything in you,
but out of their own love for you, did it contrary to what
you deserve by nature and by behavior, You couldn't speak
about it as both a gift and a wage, and yet we have even so-called
reformed, and I know I wasn't brought up reformed, so to you,
you might go, yeah, I know, I'm not gonna say anything good about
that as a background, but for me, for a while there, that was
what I was attaining to. I thought that was where the
Christian life was at. So you have, and I wanted to
find this so I could quote it properly, you have people in
reform circles saying, we cry down the law in respect of justification. And what they mean by that is,
we acknowledge that to be just before God, the law can't do
it, only the gospel can do it. And that's great, but then they
go on to say, but we set it up as a rule of sanctification. And the danger in that is it
becomes a merit-based system. And I've read enough reformed
theologians or people of that persuasion to know that not all
of them were consistent and meant it to be some sort of performance
thing, but that's the danger. Paul, in contrast here, starts
off with a very needful thing, and that is he frames this concept
of sanctification, personal holiness, the Christian life, And he sets
it up as something that we need God to do for us. And you see, you know, where
we read in verses 9 through 13 that he asked that God would
do certain things for them. And it's not an uncertain thing
because Paul, at the end of the epistle, says that in a prayer,
verse 23 of chapter five, may the God of peace himself sanctify
you completely and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved
blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus. He who calls you
is faithful and who also will do it. So Paul's theology of
practical holiness, and by that I just mean how we live day to
day, what we do, how we should act, was centered on God beginning
the work, God enabling the work and God completing the work.
And that's different than the emphasis in religion as a whole,
which will put this as something that you need to achieve a certain
level of understanding. So as we look at this section
of scripture, I'll just call out the outline here. Shame on me, I don't have a title
for this message yet. Maybe I'll think of one on the
way home. Verse nine, we see Paul's thankfulness. Verses 10
and 11, there's this prayer and idea and concern about God providing. And then verse 12, there's a
prayer for increasing love. And then verse 13, contrary to
how it might look in the NIV, there's a certainty of outcome
based on the prior two. That is, if God provides, and
if God causes his people's love to increase, then we will be
blameless and holy in his presence. But let's look at this a little
bit more closely here. So verse nine, and I do have
printed out in my notes the text of the NIV, so if I messed you
up, those of you who have one, you'll hopefully follow along
a little bit better, and for everybody else, I'm sorry. Verse
nine, how can we thank God enough for you in return for all the
joy we have in the presence of our God because of you. Now, if you were able to or can
call to remembrance, if you're able to hear or can call to remembrance
some of the things that Paul said in the first few chapters
ahead of this, you know that Paul came into town encountered
very fierce opposition and got run out of town. And after a
certain period of time, they snuck Timothy alone by himself
back in, and he brought back a good report, good news, a gospel
report about how the gospel had worked. And with everything else
that was going on in Paul's life, this was a breath of fresh air. It was something that he knew
the source of it to be God. He did talk them up. I mean,
he said how he was thankful of what they had done, but at root
he knew it was God's work that had done that, and he was thankful
for it. And as I thought about this,
I thought of how unthankful I can be sometimes. I didn't intend
this to be a New Year's message, right? We're looking ahead to
2025 and we're forgetting what's behind. But if you look back
at 2024, you could spend a lot of time in negative thought. And this is just what I know
about. I don't know individually things that you all have gone
through in the last year, but if you think about, you know,
Joe's passing and the manner of Joe's passing, and you think
about the flood with the church, and you think of some of the
loss that people incurred in this town and members of the
congregation, you could say, man, that was a rough year. Why is God having us go through
this? I don't know that I can handle
this. Boy, I hope 2025 is better. I wanna forget the things that
are behind, and I'm just hoping that 2025 is better. But I would
caution you to say or to look for not just the bad that happened,
I don't think we should, I think it's Bob Marley, I don't
know that I should go out on a limb with something like that,
but I think it was Bob Marley who said, don't worry, be happy.
Now everybody's gonna be thinking about tropical things, and it's
not very tropical outside, but that isn't what he's saying.
He's not saying, and that's not what I'm saying, he's not saying
don't worry, be happy, he's saying, God, even in the midst of trial,
God, even in the midst of suffering, God, even in the midst of lies
and deception and hardship and whatever else you want to put
in there, sickness, God is good. And if you think about 2024,
a lot of good things happened in 2024. I got to meet people that I don't
know that I would have met otherwise. People who have reached out to
us as a church and who have sent us gifts and have expressed their
concern for us. Without the hardship, that wouldn't
have happened. And I believe that they did that
out of a love for God and were pushed along by God to do that. How can we thank God enough for
all the wonderful things that he did in 2024? We need somehow
to get out of our rut of only thinking about the bad. We need
to forget, as another message that I heard Joe preach from,
forget the things that are behind that we're bad, but we don't
wanna forget the things that are behind that are good and
the works of God that have happened. So Paul, even though he could
clearly have talked about, man, we got beat up, left for nearly
dead, had this church that was there, thought things were working
out, man, I'm just tired of all this. I'm just gonna... go off somewhere and I just need
some time to get away. I give up. No, Paul instead was
thankful, and he even talked about the joy that he had because
of a work that God did in a people. Now that work wasn't perfect,
otherwise Paul wouldn't talk about what's lacking in their
faith. And our work isn't perfect here,
You and I have a lot that we need for God to do, and sanctification
is God working through the circumstances that are here to conform us to
his image, but it's God's work. But there is something to be
thankful for, and that is the work that Christ has done in
his people. And the love that you see in others just because of what God is working
in them. And I think while my intention
is not to teach on prayer here, and I'm probably the least qualified
to teach on prayer, but I think this is also a good reminder
for us that when we pray, instead of going right to our concerns
and right to the things that need to be fixed, that we take
some time and think about all the good things that God has
done. And maybe you can't think of everything on the spot, and
I know in a few messages that I've listened to recently, Joe
said that that was something that helped him immensely, especially
as he dealt with depression, but it helped him as a general
practice was just find something to be thankful about. and not
make it up, right? You know, I'm thankful for this
water. I mean, it's okay. I'm thankful
that it's wet. I don't know that I would go
out and buy that, try not to show the brand. I don't know
that I would go out and buy this like, oh man, this is the greatest
thing. But I'm thankful for the reality
that God provides for us. He finds a way to give us what
we need. And sometimes we try to read
through the tea leaves and try to say, God, if you could just
do this, if we could just figure out this one thing, the rest
of the year would be great. I don't know about you, but I'm
not all-knowing, so I can't say if that one thing got figured
out, everything would go great. I have this sneaking suspicion
that the one thing, whatever it might be, that you or I think
needs to be resolved, like yesterday or six months ago, if that was
resolved, there would be something else that would get in the way. But do you have this attitude
Do I have this attitude of thankfulness before God for all the good that
he's done? I pray that God will show us
more and more how we can be thankful for what he's doing for us and
what he's doing through others And I think it's important just
on that through others part, it's not abstract, right? He's like, I'm thankful for everything
in the world. No, he's thankful for them. He's thankful for a people. And
I can say this, I'm thankful for the fellowship we've had
with people in the gospel in this last year. And I'm looking
forward to, by the grace of God, the ability to have more of that. I pray that God would give me
the kind of joy and you the kind of joy in that that he had because
of the Thessalonians, but understand that Paul's thankfulness is not
abstract and ours shouldn't be either. In chapter 2, verse 20,
he says, you are our glory and joy. And I know, don't want to
puff anybody up who listens to this, but I know when I would
talk to Joe, And we would talk about this church, certainly
Joe would talk from time to time about some of the difficulties
that he had and conflicts that he had, but by and large, What
I heard from him was his great love for the people here and
his great joy in the fact that God had allowed him to have the
blessing and opportunity and joy of preaching the gospel and
seeing some fruit from preaching the gospel. That's the sort of
thing that we should focus on ahead of any concerns that we
might have. We shouldn't ignore our concerns. We shouldn't be, this will date
me, Pollyannish about it, right? We don't want to be an My wife's
name is Paula, so I have to be careful with that, and I'm not
referring to her, but as I understand it, that's something you don't
wanna be. You don't wanna be a Pollyanna. So be thankful. Second of all,
in verses 10 and 11 of chapter three, pray that God would provide. So Paul says, night and day we
pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what
is lacking in your faith. And then he says, now may our
God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus clear the way for
us to come to you. So I do have to address this
lacking in your faith. He's not saying God brought you
part of the way there and I have to help you to do the good works
that you need to do. in order to be fully saved. What
he is saying, though, is, due to the shortness of the time
that I had with you, and due to some of the questions, and
this is a bit of an inference based on what he covers in chapters
four through the end of the book, is there are some things that
they were concerned about that had he explained Christian faith
a little more clearly, they wouldn't have had those questions. So
when Paul talks about the Christian life, he does talk about some
don'ts, right? Their culture, and it's amazing
as things have gone along in my life, and I'm old, not as
old as Eric thinks he is, but I'm old. And I remember in the 80s some
things, and I thought, man, this is bad. And there's things that
I don't know that I would have even thought of as being mainstream
that are happening right now. And in their culture, it was
very much like that. It was very much a non-Christian
culture. There are people who talk about
our culture right now as being post-Christian, whether or not
that's the best description or not. we have a lot of the same
things to concern ourselves with that they did in the first century
in pagan areas. And I would say whatever the
United States may have been, where it is right now by behavior
is certainly pagan. So there are some outward behavior. Verse three talks about sexual
immorality. And there are some things that
we could get from the text, and I don't wanna go ahead, but with
talking about that too much, other than to say he's talking
about behavioral things that they needed to understand. Hey,
you're a Christian, that's not right. That's not something Christians
do or put themselves in, or at the very least, you shouldn't
consider that as indifferent. But he also talks about their
need for love for one another. He prays about it here, but he
talks about it later on in chapter four. And he also talks about
future things. They apparently were upset. about
things that were yet to be future. And then there were some other
things that he says that, again, without giving it away, it's
not just morality that he concerns himself with. Whereas when people
talk about personal holiness, personal practical holiness,
they're worried about, do you smoke? Do you drink? Again, date
myself, back in the 80s, do you watch Three's Company? Right? That was kind of the mark whether
or not you were good, at least to the nun who taught us, you
were a good Catholic or not. If you were a good Catholic,
you didn't watch Three's Company. So she had in her mind what sanctification
looked like there by whether or not you watch that show. And
I'm not saying, it's been a long time since I've seen it, but
based on vague memories, there's a lot worse out there right now. So, what's lacking? in our faith,
what he means by that, more above and beyond just the behavior,
what he's concerned about is the doctrine, the truth that
they didn't have, and that he, as a preacher of the gospel,
as an apostle of God, would be able to do, and that's why he
prays that he would be able to go there and supply it, and that's
why he prays that God would clear the way, or as the new King James
puts it, direct his way there. And I think this is really timely
in light of where we are as a church. We need people, men specifically, to
teach us. We need to be taught of God.
We need to hear from the apostolic word, whether it's through our
own reading, but also through this gathering. We need men called
by God to stand before us, to lead the congregation, and to
supply what's lacking in our faith, and by that to address,
as God lays it on their heart, what is found in scripture and
speak the truth and love to the church. We need, in a word, God
to provide for us in that way. And that should be part of our
prayers. And I pray there are other churches
right now that don't have a full-time pastor. From what I understand,
and by that I mean sister churches, churches in more or less our
orbit are related to us that don't have a pastor right now.
There are believers who don't have a pastor or a church near
to them, we should be concerned for that as well. We should pray
that God would direct or clear the way for that to come about. We believe that that is a necessity,
a preaching of the word of God, an apostolic word to the people
of God and men who are there to supply what's lacking in the
faith of people who are here. We need to hear truth spoken
in love repeatedly. And before Paul is gonna have
any discussion to any questions about how they needed to live
their life, he was gonna petition God to provide a way for that
to happen. A way for, I should be more clear
with that, a way for him and I assume Silas and Timothy to
speak to their questions and to instruct them through preaching
and teaching. And he knew that that was impossible
apart from a work of God. And Paul had sent, I mean, if
we look back earlier in chapter three, Paul had sent Timothy
to establish verse two and encourage you concerning your faith so
that no one should be shaken by these afflictions. Paul had
that as a background but he understood in the comings and going there
were still things that were up in the air there were still things
that needed to be addressed and and there will be until we're
in glory we're still gonna lack there's no Christian as an island,
right? It's not me and Jesus in the
woods with my Bible. That's not a sufficient means
by which we can grow. We need the encouragement that
we can only get by coming together as a church and that we can only
get by spending our time with other believers. And we need
to pray continually that God would provide for that. I don't know what's in store
for us. I don't know what's in store for the other churches
that I'm aware of that don't have a pastor currently, but
we should understand that that is something that has happened
in the past, right? And it's something that the ideal
that we should pray that God would provide a way for that
to be dealt with. My notes continued to the next
page, and as I turned them over, another thought is, I mean, historically,
I don't know. I mean, 2 Thessalonians is written
in such a way that I don't know fully whether or not Paul was
able to visit and go back as he expected. Certainly, the church
continued on long enough that Paul wrote another letter, again,
addressing some of the concerns that they had. But I don't know
if Paul, had his prayer answered in the way he expected. And I
think that's true of us, is like, you know, if I had my choice, I could pray in a certain way,
I would hope that things would work out like fill in the blank,
right? That isn't necessarily how God
works. God answers our prayer according
to what is best for us, which is good, If he answered prayers
in the way that we ask them, I would suspect we would go through
a lot worse than we do without it. But just understand this
is whether or not God answers prayer in the way that we give
it, the prayer that Paul had that God would straighten or
clear the way for him to make it back to them, It was a right
prayer for him to ask, and it's a right prayer for us to ask
for our situation to be made clear and for us to have
a pastor or pastors, plural, to lead us again. Nextly, in verse 12, his second
prayer, is for increasing love. Now it may seem odd or surprise
us, you know, Paul, you're going to talk about the Christian life. Shouldn't you pray that they
stop acting like such pagans? I mean, wouldn't that be how
you would word it? It's like God, I don't know what
to do with these people. We barely had enough time to
get them to clean up, and man, some of the things that they
still think are okay, I don't understand. God, I pray that
you would clean them up. Help them to act like Christians.
No, that isn't how Paul prays. Paul's gonna speak to deficiencies
in how they live later on, and how they think. But second only to the truth and
second only in order, I don't know if it would be true in importance,
but if there are two pillars to what we need as a church,
we need the truth on the one hand, the truth of the gospel,
and on the second hand, we need increasing love. So it shouldn't
surprise us that this is how Paul prays, may the Lord make
your love increase and overflow for each other, and for all is
literally what he says, and for everyone else, just as ours does
for you. One writer put it this way, Paul
and Timothy and Silas do not demand this love of the Thessalonians
as though they themselves are able to produce it. They ask
the Lord to bestow it even as he is the fount of this love. Without him and the power of
his love, we are able to do nothing. So he's not saying, be loving,
right? Work it up in yourselves. Quit
your meanness and be nice to each other. But he is saying,
God, what this church needs, and I think it's true of this
church, and it's true of every church, is the only way we're
going to survive and thrive and live as we should is if God gives
each one of us a love for each other. I've heard it from multiple people.
I know Joe would say it is like we could talk about, you know,
I love you, but I don't always like you, right? And sometimes
that can be conflict can bring out things in people where you
find out, you know, I don't really like this person the way that
I should. apart from any personal preferences,
apart from any oddities that we may see, apart from anything
that rubs us the wrong way, what we have to understand that God's
will is for us, and God is trying and will succeed in working in
us, that is a growing love for one another. Think you're tired
of each other now? Think you're tired of me or Eric
now? You're stuck with us through
eternity if you belong to Christ, right? So you better start loving
us now. Now, that sounds very legalistic,
but God has to give us a love for one another. The only way
we will seem any different to anyone is if there is a natural,
and by that I mean a supernatural as opposed to artificial love
that we have for one another. And I know I've seen it. I've been blessed in my life
to be able to travel including internationally quite a bit.
And you can always tell when there's a people that have some
semblance of the gospel, and there are professed believers
there, because when you're among those people, you can sense a
unfeigned, Genuine love. Doesn't mean it's perfect, doesn't
mean you like everything about what's going on, but you can
see, hey, what they're talking about, what they're about, how
they're acting in these things, that is what I want to be about. I want to be around these people
more. And that is what we need. And it's not just that, though.
It's not just we close the doors and everybody who's in here Paul
says, you know, everybody who's in the congregation love them,
but he starts there. But he also says for everyone
else, and that becomes a bit harder. I know our current political
situation, and by that I mean the broader scope of the way
things are going is, you know, love is love, and who are you
to stop love? And there's a misunderstanding
of what love is. But sometimes we use that as
an excuse to be unloving towards those people. Instead of thinking,
but for the grace of God, there go I, we think, you know, why
don't you just die or go somewhere else or whatever, you know, why
can't I be in a place where everybody thinks like me, which, you know,
it's, if I'm thinking, it must be the right way. Why can't I
be in a place like that? I think Paul's challenge here
for the church, something that he knows that only God can produce
in them, is not only to learn to love one another properly
in the gospel, but to have a genuine, heartfelt love for people outside
the church. People can tell when your only
interest in them is whether or not you can persuade them to
be One of you, I've heard variations on this from several people,
and I've experienced it as well, is like, you talk to somebody
who's not a Christian, and you show an interest in their life,
you are prompted somehow out of concern for them to talk to
them. And when they find out you're a Christian, and if they've
had experience with it, or just are able to discern it some other
way, they say something along the lines of, are you being nice
to me just so you can convince me to go to your church, or do
you really care about me? And what Paul says here is, may
the Lord make your love increase and overflow for everyone. I can't give you a formula for
doing that, and if I did, I would be wrong anyway. All I can say
is may God do that for us as a church. May God do that for
us as believers. May he give us a love for other
people, as well as for one another. Then
verse 13 is the certainty of outcome. Now, I alluded to this
earlier, the NIV makes this sound like this is another prayer. May he strengthen your hearts.
And that would be a good prayer. I mean, may he strengthen your
hearts or may he establish your heart. May he make your inmost
being strong enough so that these things would be true. But he's
not, as far as I can tell, and I've read a number of commentators,
I haven't seen anybody who really disagrees with this, He's talking
about this as an outcome. So if we were to summarize, may
God provide your growth in the faith. May God make your love
increase and overflow so that, and if you notice in the NIV,
may he strengthen your heart so that, all I'm saying is that
the so that is ahead of this. May he do provide truth May he give you love for one
another and for everyone in order that your hearts are strengthened
and established in holiness to be blameless. And I don't know
about you, but that changes how I think about personal holiness.
Because if I focus on what I need to do, and what I need to not
do, instead of focusing on, God, are you giving me men and the
word of God and the gospel? in a clear fashion and God are
you giving me a love and are you putting me among people who
are loving towards me and are you giving me a love for them
and for everyone in general so that I can be blameless and holy
that's different than saying you know God give me enough energy
to be blameless and holy and One of the questions that can
come up is, well, if I'm saved and I'm going to go to heaven,
what about now? What's the point to now? What
good am I now? Especially if you struggle with
the negatives that happen to you in life. You can be in a
place where you go, I don't understand what the point of now is. The
worse the situation is, the more unresolvable the situation seems
to be, the more you can struggle with this idea of what's the
point? You know, just send me to heaven. You know, at least there I know
I won't have to deal with this. Well, Paul doesn't look at it
that way. He doesn't look at their pagan society. If you think it's bad, it has
been bad in the last however many years in the United States.
However bad it is, even now, it was worse in Thessalonica. Paganism had no tolerance for
anybody who taught the gospel of Christ. In fact, most people
mocked the idea. But if there's a truth being
taught and a love that God is providing for us, He will make
certain through those means that we will be blameless and holy
in the presence of our God and Father when Christ comes with
all of his holy ones. To put it another way, the writer
of Hebrews says, it is good for our hearts to be strengthened
by grace, that's Hebrews 13, nine. In a word, not law, but
gospel. The gospel of salvation that's
granted and received in Christ is the only way to our holiness. The goal of our life here, we
don't know how long we have, we might have One hour, we might
have 30, 40, 50 more years here. The goal of
our life now is to live out what God is working in us so that
he can bring about his end through the truth of the gospel and through
the love of the Holy Spirit that's shed abroad in our hearts. What does that look like? You
might say. I need steps. I can't tell you. God will show
you in your life how that can come about. What you and I should
be praying for is, like I said, the truth of God to be taught.
And if it seems like I'm laboring this, I'm doing it on purpose.
We need the truth of God to be taught to us. through our own
reading, through the preaching of faithful men, through our
interaction with other believers, and we need the love of God to
change us. And we know it will. I mean,
we can read ahead and know that for everyone that God begins
a good work in, he's faithful to complete it. And we're not
what we need to be yet. One of the quotes that I came
across this week in listening to things, one of the quotes
I came across from Joe, he said, I'm content to be whatever it
is God has made me by his grace. And what he means by that, I'm not there yet. And Paul,
Joe often referred to Philippians 3, even though that wasn't always
his text. He always found his way back
there. So when you ask me, what can I read? Philippians 3 comes
to mind. I'm not yet. I haven't achieved
yet. I'm not what I should be. But
Joe goes on to say, but I won't be satisfied until I'm like Christ. And we know that's not gonna
be fully until heaven, but that doesn't mean that we don't want
growth to happen now, it just means that we can't make it happen
by just pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We have to
pray and rely on God to bring that about. Another quote, and I'll close
with this. It was never intended that you
and I should merely be believers in abstract points of theology,
but that we should experience the grace of God and live out
the grace for the doctrines that we believe. Let us never allow
ourselves to be right and unmoved to be correct and uninfected. And I think that's so important
for us to remember. It's so important for us to remember
in light of where we are as a church. We're not done yet. I mean, there's
some days I feel more than done. I feel well done, burnt out,
overdone, but we're not there yet. And I can say, you know, theologically,
my beliefs haven't changed significantly for a long time. But if I just
sit in that and go, well, we're right, everybody else is wrong,
too bad for them. That isn't living the Christian
life. That isn't what Paul prayed for the Thessalonians. Hey, you
know you're the elect. You're elect. Good for you. Don't
do anything else. It's all in the bag. No, what
Paul expected and prayed for on their behalf was that God
would provide truth and love so that their hearts would be
encouraged and strengthened so that when Christ returned, which
interestingly enough, he spends a fair amount of time on here
later on as one of their concerns, when Christ returned, they would
be blameless and holy, not because of anything in them, but what
God worked in them. Let's pray. Heavenly Father,
we thank you for your word, Lord, I pray. Once again, as we think about
these things, Lord, that you would help us to be thankful,
help us to remember the things that you've done in this past
year, help us to be compassionate, help us to have a love that is
supernatural and beyond anything that we could do on our own,
because what we can do on our own is not enough. And help us to hold on to the
truth. Help us to provide for us a godly man or men to to lead this
congregation, and Lord, I pray that you would do that for our
sister churches that are without a pastor as well. Lord, I pray
for, I just pray for us in general that
we would see the desperate need that is there and that you, by your Holy Spirit,
would grant us the ability to live lives that are worthy
of the calling that you've called us to. We ask this in Jesus'
name, amen.